Clap Twice If You Can Hear Me

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Imagine that you’re the coach at a boy’s football camp. The ages range from fourth through eighth grade and there’s about 250 of these kids sitting on the front lawn of your field house waiting for the first day of camp to begin. Well, they’re not actually waiting. It’s more like loosely controlled chaos in a very condensed area.

Some of the younger kids don’t want to be here. They sit almost teary-eyed in the corner wondering if they will be able to make any friends. Their minds are most definitely not on football. There are also kids that are happy to be there, but for all the wrong reasons. They sit in the group talking loudly. Topics could range from video games to what’s for lunch. But football is an afterthought. It’s the ‘something’ that brought them here but not a priority for them.

Then you’ve got the kids in the front row. These kids eat, sleep and dream football. They’re going pro. They know that they’ll be the next Tom Brady or Lamar Jackson without question. Their eyes follow you everywhere you go, just waiting for instruction.

To these kids, this is all that matters.

So here you are at the front of this diverse and chaotic crowd. You’ve got to get this mob organized so that each and every kid knows exactly where they are going. You’ve got to get them proper-fitting equipment. You’ve got to pair them with another coach who is specific to their position and their age group. You’ve got to lay down the schedule so that they know where they are going and when they have to be there. And in order for it to work, you can’t leave any of them behind.

But how are you going to do it? Sure the kids in the front are ready to go, but the rest of them? Seems like a pretty impossible task. They’ve all got their own things going on. They’ve all got their own interests and reasons for being there. And you’ve got to get them to tune that out for a moment so they can focus on football. How do you do it?

“CLAP TWICE IF YOU CAN HEAR ME”

clap clap

It trickles out like a whisper from your football guys up front. It’s just a ripple, but it grabs the attention of a few others.

“CLAP TWICE IF YOU CAN HEAR ME”

Clap Clap

Now you’re onto something. The kids up front put a little more umph into their clap this time around and it was joined by a greater portion of the other kids in the group.

“CLAP TWICE IF YOU CAN HEAR ME”

CLAP CLAP

This time it thunders. One group. One sound. You’ve got their attention. All eyes are on you.

Easy part’s done. Now what are you going to say?

The truth is that right now, I don’t really know what to say.

These are uncharted waters for me. The murder of George Floyd has sparked something in the minds and hearts of Americans that I have never seen before and, truthfully, I don’t think that I was ready to see it. You see, I’m about as apolitical as they come. I don’t watch the news. I don’t stay up on current events. Hell, I don’t even vote. And I have a million reasons why.

Many years ago in China, during a period of political upheaval and unrest, two schools of thought emerged on the topic of how to govern people. The first was Confucianism. Confucianism stressed the values of humaneness, righteousness, ritual, human nature and filial piety. My understanding of this school of thought is that you would put structures in place for the people to abide by, that you could produce an orderly and stable society. Confucianist thought’s greatest competitor at the time was Taoism. Taoist thought stressed a return to nature to live in accordance with the natural world. One of my favorite quotes from it’s founder, Lao Tzu is, “The more laws are written, the more criminals are produced.” You can probably guess which of those I favor.

Though there is no evidence to it, Winston Churchill was famously quoted as saying, “The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.” The truth being that most of us are incredibly uneducated on the issues that face our country and my thought being that an uneducated vote is worse than not voting. I don’t want to accidentally support someone or something that I don’t believe in.

And then there’s zen. By now you may have an understanding of how important to me those three letters are. You may understand how much time and dedication I’ve put into my practice. You may even know that the specific practice of zen that I am committed to focuses on acceptance of what is happening in the present moment rather than thinking of ways to adjust that moment to suit your own needs. It’s a manner of thinking not easily broken for me. In fact when the first riots began in downtown Santa Monica not too far from where I live, my first thought was to go sit and meditate in the front yard. It wasn’t to go out and join a protest or to march in the streets. It wasn’t to jump on social media and post about what should or shouldn’t be done. It was to sit with the feelings that were coming up. It was to try and not get caught up with the emotion and power of the present moment, but to let them pass so that a cooler head could take the next step.

And yet…

Maybe I’m wrong.

Maybe my meditation cushion really isn’t the best place for me right now. The ancient wisdom for practicing the martial arts is that it would be better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war. That cultivating peace of mind is a noble endeavor, but that it also must be put to good use when it is needed. And maybe this is no longer a time of peace. Maybe the peace that I know is not offered and available to everyone. And maybe I hadn’t really thought about that.

So I really don’t have a lot to say on what should be done. I know that black lives matter. I know that not every cop is a killer. I know that something is wrong. But for every little thing that I know, there’s a lot more that I don’t know. I’ve been wrapped up in my own shit and haven’t really taken notice of the government’s actions, good or bad. I’ve been the kid in the back row who wasn’t really interested in what the speaker up front had to say in the first place. But I’ve been hearing some clapping up front and it’s starting to get my attention. 

Taoism stresses a universal flow, or the Tao that we should all strive to live in accordance with. I thought this had to do with finding your place in the system and working with that. But there’s also a listening component to the practice so that you can know what the universe actually wants you to do.

And a few nights ago we had some pretty epic winds in Los Angeles. One of my partners used to say that those Santa Ana winds brought magik with them to stir things up. I was at home wrapped up in a book when I heard a loud ‘CLAP’ at the other end of my room. The winds had come through and knocked one of my totems off of it’s ledge and onto the floor. This specific totem I picked up at my first Lightning in a Bottle festival. It’s a piece of driftwood with a nail sticking out of the top. Across the front is burnt and inscription:

“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”

— Dr. Seuss, The Lorax

The universe doesn’t really speak more clearly than that. So right now I don’t really have a lot to say. But the people in the streets clapped once. The universe clapped twice.

And I’m listening.

I can hear you.

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